Putting a Humane, Dignified Face on Refugees

Credit Lynsey Addario

Putting a Humane, Dignified Face on Refugees

By Rena SilvermanApr. 18, 2016Apr. 18, 2016

Refugee, migrant, asylum seeker: The words evoke images of uprooted people constantly on the move. “Just do a Google search for ‘refugee,’ ” says Omar Victor Diop, a photographer from Dakar. “There are far more pictures of refugees on boats or trains or who jump a fence.”

So when he was commissioned to produce pictures that could change that narrative, he made formal portraits of refugees from the Central African Republic living in Cameroon, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates some 260,000 are waiting for a better life.

“When you look at all the stories in the press, the refugees, I think it’s very dark,” said Mr. Diop, 35. “There is no room for dignified depiction of refugees, and they’re not shown as human beings with hopes and plans to go back to normal life.”

That was the challenge he shared with four other photographers in a new exhibit, “Refugee,” at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. Chosen for the pictures’ understanding and different approaches, the exhibit aims to present the global refugee crisis in a different light.

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In his home village in the Central African Republic, Seini was a cow herder. He loved that life, he said. But in Cameroon, he had to learn another occupation until he could return to his cows. Mbile refugee site. 2015.Credit Omar Victor Diop

“We chose photographers for the ‘Refugee’ exhibition from a variety of countries, as well as from varying genres,” Patricia Lanza, Annenberg’s director for talent and content and co-curator of the show, said in an email. “We have photographers from the fields of fine art, like Graciela Iturbide; portraiture and fashion — in the cases of Martin Schoeller and Omar Victor Diop; and journalism, through Lynsey Addario and Tom Stoddart.”

Mr. Diop chose to make portraits against neutral backgrounds, which he later replaced with blue clouds. He then scanned or photographed frames out of patterned, blue fabric, worn throughout Africa, that complemented his subjects’ clothing.

“I have always been a fan of Picasso’s Blue Period,” he said. “It’s funny because Picasso’s Blue Period is probably the saddest moment in his life and for me blue is the color of hope.”

Because Mr. Dion is Senegalese and has a Muslim background, he connected quickly with the refugees — who were mostly of the Mbororo tribe — an advantage he had over Western photographers.

“It takes a Muslim greeting like ‘Salaam alaikum’ to create a link,” he said.

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This refugee was building a roof over the playground of the shelter La 72. The mural behind him lists some of the worst acts of violence against refugees and migrants in Mexico, including the 2010 San Fernando massacre. Tenosique, Mexico. 2015.Credit Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide, the award-winning Mexican photographer, looked at what she described as the “invisible” population of the displaced in Colombia and Mexico, where many have fled gang violence, or worse, from their home countries, El Salvador and Honduras.

The numbers are intense: The United Nations estimates there are 6.7 million internally displaced people in Colombia and some 3,448 refugees and 3,423 asylum seekers in Mexico. Mexican law provides protection for children who have fled in fear, but real life presents some discrepancies.

“They are teenagers, almost children, they are running away from the gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha, they are threatened with death, and they are only 15 or 16 years old,” Ms. Iturbide said in an email. “Listening to their stories and making their pictures was very tough.”

In Tabasco, Mexico, she photographed inside La 72, a shelter whose name commemorates a 2010 tragedy, in which 72 migrants were killed on Mexico’s northern border. In one of her images, a young man from El Salvador rests in front of a mural, his legs tilted on a chair, his shoes off, his gaze sharp. At the Puente Nayero Humanitarian Space, she photographed a group of Colombian children who, despite unthinkable circumstances, were busy playing soccer.

“It’s different from Mexico,” her assistant Oswaldo Ruiz, who was present for most of the photographs, said. “The Colombian displaced people don’t have much hope. They just move from one city to another.”

Ms. Iturbide, 73, has photographed many communities before — women in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Mexican-Americans in the White Fence barrio of East Los Angeles, to name a few — but she had never photographed refugees.

“Even I have a very pessimistic view,” she said. “I think that by itself photography is not going to help much. It is us, as civic society, only able to make a change.”

“Refugees” is on view at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles from April 23 to Aug. 21.